O2

“It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”—Krishnamurti—

School finished like a dull dream that passes through consciousness and is forgotten when morning begins. Jafarr would have joined his friends at the Surface Gate, but he had a promise to keep to his father. He left the school building with Alzdar, who could barely get a word to him since the trip to the Surface Patrol. Dzhon had left class early to take the Adult Test, and Jafarr was sure he would not see him until the next day. 

Jafarr walked down the middlecity streets back to the transit hall with the others, his mind still going over the trip to the Surface Patrol. Entering the hall, passing the shops and picking their metro lines to return home, or ones that would take them higher to the Surface Gate, they departed, leaving Jafarr standing on the edge waving to them as most of his classmates climbed onto the same metro car. He turned and walked to the metro stop that would take him further into the middlecity.

The subway car pulled up with a deep hiss, and the doors opened. Already packed with people returning home from factories after a long day of work, a few thirty filed out, and such like that squeezed back inside the metro car as Jafarr stepped on, him finding a spot inside the sardine can-like spacing somewhere near the door. He held onto the nearest pole as he watched the doors slide close. Once again the metro rumbled off into the tunnels, rolling downward on a slope, the dark walls enveloping the metro car as it started again into the tunnel.

Inside the car hummed higher and higher in pitch as they sped faster and faster. People stared blankly at one another, minding their own business as they listened dully to the whirr of flight cars overhead though some to their personal music chips. Jafarr discreetly scanned the faces in the car through his long bangs, spotting mostly middlecity workers until he recognize a cluster of groupies that stood in the rotating stand where the one metro car joined the one following it, talking low under their breaths though it would not have carried past the bottom-frayed rubberized accordion-style flaps that kept the two cars attached. They kicked the chips of rubber and plastic that lay on the metal floor grate under their fashionable and therefore stolen shoes, grinning back at him with fixed leers, rubbing their knuckles. The clear tattoo of O2 was permanently etched in nearly all their necks, though some had it written on the backs of their hands. 

Averting his eyes, Jafarr felt a trickle of sweat develop on the back of his neck, despite the cold of the air around him. Glancing through the car, Jafarr let go of his pole and squeezed his way through the commuters to the front end of the car where he knew was a regular security station as well as another pair of doors to exit out of. He nodded to one man who let him by though mostly staring at Jafarr’s black head of hair. The woman nearest to the door stepped back from Jafarr when he reached for the pole there, then looked over his shoulder to the back, grimacing. She ducked closer to the security station herself.

Looking up at the man stationed as a metro guard, the insides of Jafarr’s stomach contracted, his throat going dry. It was People’s Military officer there, not a policeman. Holding back a groan, Jafarr peeked once more to the back of the metro car, hoping the

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 26.02.2018
ISBN: 978-3-7554-7873-7

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